My 10 Favorite Features: Adobe Premiere Pro Next

Adobe has updated their popular professional video editing application, Premiere Pro. Here’s the 10 new features we’re most excited about!

Adobe is revealing the next version of Premiere Pro at NAB 2013. If you are attending NAB, be sure to check out Adobe at booth #SL3910. Adobe is currently offering a 40% NAB promo on the Creative Cloud.

In this post, I a look at my 10 favorite features in Premiere Pro Next. A mix of small & big additions, there is something for everyone here (previous users, as well as FCP & Media Composer editors).

Move a clip up or down

Yes! Thank you Adobe. For ex Final Cut Pro editors, this feature will be very welcome. This is a huge time saver and my favorite new feature.

Adobe calls this new feature Nudge. You can Nudge clips up, down, and left and right. By default Nudge Up & Down don’t have shortcuts but you can add these. You can also nudge in the Titler – very cool.

Insert as Nest or Individual Clips

Some new insert and overwrite features made it into the update. The new feature appears as an icon in the top left of the Timeline (highlighted in Red in the screenshot below).

This feature determines the behavior when you edit a sequence into a sequence. I often prefer to edit a sequence into another sequence as clips, and this feature lets you do just that.

When it is toggled on, the sequence is added as a Nest. When it is toggled off, the sequence is added as individual clips. I loved this feature in FCP & Media Composer and it is a welcome addition to Premiere Pro.

Control Surface Support

Control surface support was previously in Audition CS6 and is a welcome addition to Premiere Pro.

Timeline Display Settings

Clicking the wrench icon in the Timeline brings up the Display Settings.

This feature makes it quick and easy to customize your display settings.

Quicker access to Track Options

Video and audio clips in the Timeline now display an FX icon.

Click on the FX to reveal fixed effect options for Video (Motion, Opacity, Time Remapping) & Audio (Volume, Channel Volume, Panner). This allows quick changes to these parameters from the timeline – can end up being a big timesaver.

Link & Locate

Check “Media Browser to Locate Files” which brings up the Media Browser, then click Locate to reconnect the media.

Paste Attributes

Paste Attributes in Premiere Pro is another feature that I will use constantly. Now when you Paste Attributes you can choose which video and audio effects to paste. In CS6 when you pasted effects it pasted all of them.

Audio Clip Mixer

In Premiere Pro CS6, the Audio Mixer worked with track audio. If you changed the volume with a track fader, you were changing the track volume, but you didn’t see the change in the Timeline (as the default was clip audio.) Premiere Pro Next adds the Audio Clip Mixer that is now part of the default workspace. Switching to the Audio Workspace brings up both the audio clip and audio track mixer.

Lumetri Looks

These looks were created with Speedgrade. You can open Speedgrade and modify the presets to create your own custom looks. These looks will be a timesaver for editors looking to quickly create stylized looks (Sixties) or fix common problems (Warm Overall).

Specify an AutoSave Location

Previously in Premiere Pro, an Autosave folder was created where your project was saved.

You can now specify a location for your Autosaves. This may seem like a small feature but this is definitely handy time saver.

The paste attributes is a really nice feature. I use it all the time in FCP7.
The one thing I really hate and bothers me in Premiere, is the audio. It’s so easy in FCP7 to erase/hide/modify/left/right, an audio of a clip, but in Premiere it’s a headache for me … I’m still learning but that’s the only thing that makes me nuts. That simple thing, Track 1 – Voice Over, Track 2 – Ambient Sound.